On 30 Nov 2010, at 22:53, Fred Bauder wrote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30zhuo.html
Fred
User:Fred Bauder
Unfortunately, comments are disabled/absent, which makes it rather difficult to add my own (non-trolling) thoughts... It's well worth reading this for a general insight into the downside of anonymity, although I'm not sure how much it actually applies to Wikipedia.
Mike
On 30 November 2010 22:53, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
For added self-referentiality, you can't read this article unless you identify yourself to the NYT.
- d.
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 6:26 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
For added self-referentiality, you can't read this article unless you identify yourself to the NYT.
I was able to read the article without registering - it's worth noting that the NY Times has a rather interesting version of a paywall, where only a handful of people who visit the article are required to register or log in. So it leads to confusion when you send a link to 100 people, and, say, 15 people can't read it.
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 6:26 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
For added self-referentiality, you can't read this article unless you identify yourself to the NYT.
I was able to read the article without registering - it's worth noting that the NY Times has a rather interesting version of a paywall, where only a handful of people who visit the article are required to register or log in. So it leads to confusion when you send a link to 100 people, and, say, 15 people can't read it.
(list-unrelated)
It's really just a porous IDwall - It's only a paywall in the sense that I get targeted ads aimed at my identity there (sometimes amusingly - the full-page-header Livescribe pen ads, when I had worked there and was given a free pre-prod version of the advertised product to field test as I left the company...).
Google, as far as I can tell, does no worse or better on that point. I use Gmail and other related services and am ok with that info being floated around for ad targeting. NYTimes can have it, too. It's well worth it for the access, IMHO.
(list-related)
Responding to Mike Peel's comment about applicability to Wikipedia; we have two variations on the anonymity theme.
One, true IP anons often feel little connection to our core goals of building an encyclopedia and supporting a constructive community to accomplish that. Not so much that I advocate shutting off anon editing at all, but it's an observation that's easy to make.
Two, nearly all WP users use pseudonymity rather than real names, and for most people not having their real name attached anywhere gives them a sense of anonymous empowerment similar to the truly anonymous trolls seen elsewhere. We see a lot of behavioral problems that are, to anyone who studies interpersonal communications online, extremely common. People don't inherently humanize other pseudonyms; they don't feel that they'll necessarily be held accountable in the same way they would in real life for behavior, etc. Coupled with the inherent degraded emotional communications in text-based communications, we have a lot of the same behavior even with persistent pseudonyms. And you can see a lot of that, where a pseudonym account gets sufficiently bad community karma on WP and they go and sockpuppet off and create another one, not caring about the underlying issue their behavior raised. That sort of thing is not unheard of in the real world, but it's generally felt to be the domain of scam artists and private investigators and the like; at the very least, socially dubious.
Hi;
Most of the vandals are anonymous. But most of the anonymous are not vandals. Those who use anonymity for bad purposes are cowards.
And anonymity is not modern or an invention of the Internet age. Writers have used it during centuries[1], for publishing contain anonymously or under pseudonyms.
Regards, emijrp
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes
2010/12/1 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 6:26 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
For added self-referentiality, you can't read this article unless you identify yourself to the NYT.
I was able to read the article without registering - it's worth noting
that
the NY Times has a rather interesting version of a paywall, where only a handful of people who visit the article are required to register or log
in.
So it leads to confusion when you send a link to 100 people, and, say, 15 people can't read it.
(list-unrelated)
It's really just a porous IDwall - It's only a paywall in the sense that I get targeted ads aimed at my identity there (sometimes amusingly - the full-page-header Livescribe pen ads, when I had worked there and was given a free pre-prod version of the advertised product to field test as I left the company...).
Google, as far as I can tell, does no worse or better on that point. I use Gmail and other related services and am ok with that info being floated around for ad targeting. NYTimes can have it, too. It's well worth it for the access, IMHO.
(list-related)
Responding to Mike Peel's comment about applicability to Wikipedia; we have two variations on the anonymity theme.
One, true IP anons often feel little connection to our core goals of building an encyclopedia and supporting a constructive community to accomplish that. Not so much that I advocate shutting off anon editing at all, but it's an observation that's easy to make.
Two, nearly all WP users use pseudonymity rather than real names, and for most people not having their real name attached anywhere gives them a sense of anonymous empowerment similar to the truly anonymous trolls seen elsewhere. We see a lot of behavioral problems that are, to anyone who studies interpersonal communications online, extremely common. People don't inherently humanize other pseudonyms; they don't feel that they'll necessarily be held accountable in the same way they would in real life for behavior, etc. Coupled with the inherent degraded emotional communications in text-based communications, we have a lot of the same behavior even with persistent pseudonyms. And you can see a lot of that, where a pseudonym account gets sufficiently bad community karma on WP and they go and sockpuppet off and create another one, not caring about the underlying issue their behavior raised. That sort of thing is not unheard of in the real world, but it's generally felt to be the domain of scam artists and private investigators and the like; at the very least, socially dubious.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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On 30 Nov 2010, at 23:53, George Herbert wrote:
Two, nearly all WP users use pseudonymity rather than real names, and for most people not having their real name attached anywhere gives them a sense of anonymous empowerment similar to the truly anonymous trolls seen elsewhere. We see a lot of behavioral problems that are, to anyone who studies interpersonal communications online, extremely common. People don't inherently humanize other pseudonyms; they don't feel that they'll necessarily be held accountable in the same way they would in real life for behavior, etc. Coupled with the inherent degraded emotional communications in text-based communications, we have a lot of the same behavior even with persistent pseudonyms. And you can see a lot of that, where a pseudonym account gets sufficiently bad community karma on WP and they go and sockpuppet off and create another one, not caring about the underlying issue their behavior raised. That sort of thing is not unheard of in the real world, but it's generally felt to be the domain of scam artists and private investigators and the like; at the very least, socially dubious.
I guess I'm one of the few that contributes under my real name.
One of the options coded into MediaWiki is to submit a real name for attribution at the same time as registering (i.e. you specify both a pseudonym and a real name). By default, this is on when you use a non-Wikimemedia install of MediaWiki. However, within Wikimedia this is always turned off. I've wondered for a long time why this is - can anyone provide an insight into the decision to disable this?
Thanks, Mike
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